The Art of Wu Wei Hai, Aaron Fisher

the art work you make is fabulous and i wish some of it were in ku cha in boulder i bet it would aid in the enjoyment of the place as i am shore it would add to any place in which tea were being consumed. it is so important to have such art work made in the way you touched on. nowadays people rush to put out stuff with nothing more than a need in their hart and mind. i know with pottery the visual aspect is important but the utilitarian i feel is more important. just as if i made a pot and was not as clear as a blank piece of paper then the ability of someone to use my pot would be hindered by what ever lingering thoughts were left on the page. as with your art it is obvious that you are there with your subject weather they be real or not one can feel the life given to them. this is rare. and i am glad to have you here posting pic's of your stuff. if you continue to do so you will enrich this board.
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Some of these are scrolls (many of the first exemplar photos, as well as 6 through ten of the ones reserved for this site). If I am sending them to tea shops or to my agents I typically have them mounted myself, choosing materials I think appropriate for the theme and/or colors. However, the 4 pieces (6-10) available here are all unmounted, which means that should someone be interested in one, they can choose the color of silk, style and wood for the scroll mounting.

Pieces 1-5 (of the teaware) are handground watercolor on handmade watercolor paper (I ground the color, but purchased the paper ). I do not usually paint in this style, usually I just use ink on rice paper. So to answer your question specifically, I almost always paint scrolls. I painted these explicitly for this community as they are more "Western" in that way. These would need to be framed as any other painting.

Of course you have shown a lot of focus on tea in pieces displayed here, but I notice recurring symbols in many scrolls, a reddish sun, cranes, pine, bamboo. Do you follow this theme or do you shy away from these traditional symbols?

I have painted some traditional symbols, like the full moon, pine, wind soughing the pines and some bamboo; but always in conjunction with tea. As I mentioned in my introduction, I don't typically paint everyday or in any mood. I wait until there is a day with plenty of unhurried time. I meditate and drink some tea and if at the end I'm in that quiet place, purified like the "Song of Tea" after my "Seven Bowls", then I pick up the brush. Sometimes what comes out is influenced by things I've seen on teaware, old paintings, etc. but it is always unplanned and spontaneous and any piece that is contrived or shows my influence, rather than the tea/quiet, is immediately crumpled up (and that is often a sign it is time to stop painting). I'm not always successful, but my artistic method is to open up and try to just wait for the brush to move itself.

Here are a couple from the gallery at The Leaf with a moon and bamboo. The full moon symbolizes enlightenment and here the master is offering his wisdom up (perhaps in a handful of leaves as the Buddha did?). It also has English calligraphy which I did years ago before I learned Chinese. The second is a Daoist mendicant drinking under bamboo--he holds one cup, but who is the second for?:

I once saw a beautiful rendentition of it that was done with slight bits of color on the robes. It was out of my price range, but I kick myself for having not gotten it. I am always curious to see who has done it and how

Here are 2 paintings of Lu Yu painted on the same day, after a long session of some sencha, hong shui oolong and aged puerh. They are almost like the same scene from 2 different angles. One cool and inspirational thing is in the calligraphy: They say that Lu Yu was an orphan adopted and raised by a Zen monastery. The abbot used the I-ching to choose his name, which means Geese flying and is a fortuitous omen. In light of that, I wrote the ancient word for Geese followed by the hexagram from the I-ching that his name is drawn from.

Last edited by Wu De on May 31st, '09, 05:58, edited 3 times in total.